


The Warmth of Your Doorways

by orphan_account



Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4
Genre: Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Pre-Canon, Substance Abuse, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-13
Updated: 2016-03-13
Packaged: 2018-05-26 13:36:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,830
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6241282
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Before he was Hancock, he was a troubled kid in Diamond City. Five Times John ran away and four times Nick Valentine brought him home.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Warmth of Your Doorways

The first time the McDonough boy disappeared, his father and step-mother were waiting outside of Nick’s office when he went out for his morning cigarette. Patrick McDonough was Boston Irish, red-haired and balding. His wife, Martha, was five years his senior, bottle blonde and going soft around the middle.

“It’s John,” Agnes said, clutching at her husband’s arm, fingernails digging into his soft flesh. “He’s gone.”

Nick lead them into his office and sat them on the sofa in his office. He set his battered tape recorder on the table between them, and waved away their confusion. “It’s a listening device,” he said. “Records what you say to help me remember. Just tell me what happened.”

Mr. and Mrs. McDonough glanced at one another. She took a shuddering breath and began relaying the story. There’d been an argument, and their younger son, John, had left in a huff. It had happened before, but he’d always come back. Now, three days later, they were frantic with worry. No one had seen hide nor hair of their son and no one knew where he might have gone off to. He was only seventeen, and the Wastes were full of wild dogs and raiders and ferals.

“Please,” said Mr. McDonough. “Find our boy. Tell him we’re not angry. We just want him home safe.”

Alone in his office, Nick replayed the recording and reviewed his case notes. The boy was brilliant and troubled, popular with his peers. The other teenagers were half in shock, almost as desperate as his parents to see him safe. There were no leads, so Nick followed a hunch to Goodneighbor. He found the kid on a mattress in a flophouse, hungover. One of the women in town, dark-haired and pretty in an Old-World way, had been taking care of him.

“He wouldn’t tell me his name,” she said. “But I couldn’t leave him out on the street.”

Nick hauled him to his feet and dragged him home. He cried the whole way back, blubbering apologies and promising that he’d learned his lesson, that it would never happen again. “Save it for your parents, kid,” Nick said. He lit a cigarette, offered one to kid to steady his nerves.

John took it, grateful, managed a shaky laugh. “They really sent you to look for me?”

“Of course,” said Nick, not liking the note of surprise in the kid’s voice. “They were worried sick.”

The kid laughed again, bitter as chicory, and lit the cigarette with a practiced flourish. His mood turned sullen as they approached Diamond City, the kid had nothing to say when his parents embraced him. A couple days later, Nick saw the kid leaving school with a black eye, and he liked that even less.

A few months later, John McDonough vanished again. Nick saved time on his investigation and went straight to Goodneighbor. John was hunched over in a bathroom stall, eyes glazed, his shirtfront crusted with dried puke. A couple hits of Jet, a handful of Mentats, a few swallows of whisky. He didn’t remember anything about the previous 24 hours. “I must have had fun, though,” he said, smiling and grimacing like he was still feeling the effects of the whisky.

“Charming,” Nick said. “You can’t keep pulling these stunts, kid. You’re going to get yourself hurt.”

Two weeks later, John disappeared for the third time. This time, he got his own self home, creeping in during the grey, pre-dawn hours. Patrick McDonough was sitting up, waiting for him on the porch. Nick never got the details of exactly what happened next, but a neighbor intervened and Diamond City security got involved.

Next time Nick saw him in the street, he called out a greeting. “Hey kid,” he said, “Let’s talk.”

John stopped in his tracks. “What do you want?” He folded his arms across his sunken chest and set his jaw set in a stubborn line. For a moment, Nick had a brief impression of the handsome man he would become.

“Let me buy you lunch,” Nick said. “No ulterior motive.”

Valentine kept his caps in canning jars, hidden behind a loose piece of paneling in his back room. Wasn’t much for a synth detective to spend his money on, so it accumulated like falling snow. John’s eyes went wide at the sight of it, but he said nothing.

Lunch was fat, handmade noodles swimming in broth, oversalted and underseasoned. Nick lit a cigarette, and the kid ate ravenously.

“How are things at home?” he asked. There was no point in subtlety, he knew the kid was smart enough to see through any social niceties.

John swallowed a mouthful of noodles, his expression guarded. “‘No ulterior motives,’ you said.”

“I’m not going to insult your intelligence by dancing around the subject,” Nick said. “You don’t have to tell me, but I have to ask.” And I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t, he thought. He took a long drag, felt the smoke curling through the gaps in his jaw.

John’s eyes darted from Nick’s eyes to his hands to the smoke spilling from his artificial lips and nose. “Fine,” he said, after a moment’s pause. “Can’t complain.”

Nick leaned forward in his seat. “Listen,” he said. “If you need an out, you can come and stay with me, no questions asked.”

The kid’s eyes narrowed to slits. “Yeah, and what do you get out of it?”

“Nothing,” Nick said. “No ulterior motive, and I mean it this time.”

“Why do you even care?”

Because things are bad and you won’t admit it, Nick thought. Because you’re too young to be running off to Goodneighbor. Because whatever you’re going through and whatever you’ve done to cope, you deserve better.

“Because,” he said, grinding his cigarette out against the scarred formica tabletop, “It’s the right thing to do and I hate standing by. I don’t like feeling like there’s something I could be doing that I’m not.”

John said nothing. “I’m fine,” he repeated, the very picture of teenaged petulance.

“My door’s always open,” Nick said. “Any time of the day or night. You be sure to tell your brother, too.”

“Whatever,” said John, rolling his eyes. “If that’s all you wanted?”

Nick shrugged, and the kid was gone, off like a rocket. The synth lit a second cigarette, the metal bones of his right hand pressing painlessly at his artificial skin, threatening to breach the surface. He winced and watched John disappear into the crowd, making his way towards the Dugout.

Things were quiet for a few months. Either John stopped going to Goodneighbor or else stopped getting caught. When he passed Nick in the street, he nodded, the respectful gesture undercut by his mocking grin. Nick rolled his eyes and waved back. the clicking of his joints audible over the whirring of internal fans and servos.

He took new cases. Tracked a missing husband to a Goodneighbor brothel and a stolen shipment of Stimpaks to a raider gang operating out of an abandoned munitions factory. There were a few murders, a kidnapping, more thefts than he could count. And the next time Mr. and Mrs. McDonough woke to find John’s bed empty, they didn’t bother asking Nick to take the case.

Nick found him in a seedy bar in Goodneighbor, flying high and draped across the laps of an older couple. Married, from the matching rings on their fingers, their hands sliding up John’s side, plucking at his buttons and stifling laughter at his eagerness. John’s expression was slack and blissful, his pupils were dilated to inky black pools. He was still fully clothed, his head thrown back, rutting against the contact.

Nick caught John by the collar and hauled him to his feet. “He’s seventeen, you fucks,” he growled. Beside him, John swayed unsteadily on his feet. He lost his balance and stumbled into Nick, who threw a protective arm around him. stumbling into Nick. “What did you give him?”

“Nothing,” said the woman, defensively. “He came onto us--”

“Like hell he did,” said Nick.

“Hey! Don’t talk to my wife like that!” The man stood, drawing himself up to his full height. He was six foot even, corded with muscle. His hands shook, his forehead glistened with sweat. There was a sick, Psycho gleam in his eyes, and Nick took an instinctive step back, putting himself between John and the larger man.

John whimpered.

“Listen,” said Nick. “We’re not looking for trouble. Let me take the kid and get out of here.”

The woman laughed cruelly. She stood, revealing herself to be tall as her husband. “How you going to stop him from coming back? Your boy’s in here three times a week, blitzed out of his fucking mind.” She jabbed a finger into Nick’s chest and he took another half-step backwards. “You wanna play concerned parent, you shoulda done something months ago.”

John tugged at his sleeve, and Nick glanced over his shoulder at him. The boy’s eyes were wide, terrified. “Nick,” he said, his voice small. “Nick, I want to go home.”

“It’s alright, John.” Nick fought to keep his tone low and soothing. “Don’t worry.” He turned back to the couple, his mouth working faster than his brain. “We’re going to walk away now,” he said. “Both of us, me and the boy. You’re going to let us leave, and you’re going to thank your lucky stars that his father sent me, instead of the Coursers.”

The woman’s eyes narrowed. “Who said anything about Coursers?”

“No one,” said Nick, and if you’re damn lucky, it’ll stay that way.” Behind him, John trembled, fisting his shaking hands in Nick’s coat.

“The fuck are you talking about, toaster?”

“Haven’t heard of the Institute, jackass?” Nick sneered at the couple, and John whispered don’t tell them, perfectly playing his role. “Don’t suppose you would have, on account of both of you being dumb as all hell. This boy’s father is on the board of trustees, and he’d do just about anything to get his son back.”

“You’re lying.” The man shuffled his weight from foot-to-foot, eyes darting between Nick’s obviously-synthetic features and the teenager cowering behind him.

Nick scoffed. “If you really think so, go ahead and take a swing at me.” He reached inside his coat, for his tape recorder, praying they wouldn’t recognize the technology. The couple watched him warily, eyes bulging out of their sockets. “I can call in a squad of Coursers. It’ll take them three minutes to get here from the perimeter we set up around this place. Now, that’s much of a head start, but…” He held the microphone up to his mouth, finger hovering over the ‘record’ button.

A bead of sweat worked its way free of the man’s hairline. “Hey now,” he said. “Don’t be hasty.”

“He’s fucking lying,” said the woman, eyes narrowed.

“Shit Janice, what if he isn’t?”

“That kid’s just drifter trash,” she said scornfully. “Come on, he’s in here all the time.”

“If he’s a drifter, than why the fuck is that synth after him?” The man shook his head. “I ain’t bringing Coursers down on us over some fucking twink.”

Nick took the opportunity to run, pulling John along in his wake. They fled through the twisting streets of Goodneighbor, out the door and into the night. John was like an anchor on his arm, dragging his heels and weighing him down. “You alright, kid?” Nick asked, once the noise and lights of the town had faded behind them.

“Yeah.”

“They didn’t hurt you?”

“I wanted them to,” John said. The high had deserted him all at once. He was in freefall, winded and wide-eyed and shaking. “I didn’t care. I wanted them to.” His teeth were chattering. Without thinking, Nick removed his coat, settled it around John’s shoulders. Overwhelmed, the kid started to cry: ugly, wracking sobs.

Nick patted him on the shoulder. “It’s alright, kid,” he said gruffly. “It’s not your fault.”

John looked up at him, sniffling, and Nick smiled gently. All at once, John’s mouth was on his, needful and desperate. John’s mouth tasted like liquor, and Nick could smell the Jet fumes clinging to his clothes. His hand slid between Nick’s coat and breast, fingertips pressing through his cheap dress shirt, digging into his synthetic grey skin.

Nick shoved him away, harder than he’d intended. “What the hell was that?”  
“You saved me,” John said, breathless. “I know my parents didn’t send you, I thought that maybe--”

“No!” said Nick. “You have the wrong idea, John. I worry about you, as a friend and a neighbor and a concerned adult. It’s not that.”

John slumped back against a wall, deflating. “God, I’m so fucking stupid,” he said. “I’m such a goddamn idiot.”

“Hey,” said Nick. “Enough of that. You’re not stupid. You’re confused. Yoiu made a couple bad decisions, but you’re seventeen, for crissake. You’re just a kid.”

“I don’t feel like a kid,” John said, miserably. “I feel like I’m about a hundred years old.”

Nick laughed and John glared at him, still enough pride left in him for teenaged defiance, even with his face streaked with tears and snot. “Laughing with you,” he said. “Not at you. I am about a hundred years old. It’s not all it’s cracked up to be, trust me.” John’s scowl deepened, and Nick patted him on the shoulder again. “Come on, quit sulking. We can still make it back to Diamond City tonight.”

“Let me stay with you,” said John. “I don’t want to go home.”

“Alright,” Nick said gently. “But tomorrow, I want you to tell your parents--or at least your brother-- where you’ve been. You don’t have to go home, but you should let them know that you’re safe.”

“Okay.”

“I won’t make you go alone,” said Nick. “I’ll go with you, alright?”

John stared fixedly at the ground. “Okay.”

They walked the rest of the way back to Diamond City in silence. John turned up the collar of Nick’s coat, shivering. It was too big for his slim frame, hanging loose in the shoulders and around the waist. The sleeves covered his hands except for his fingertips, his pinky nail longer than the rest. Nick sighed, nicotine cravings burning along his circuits. He’d left Diamond City in such a hurry that he’d forgotten his cigarettes; the pack was sitting in his desk drawer, untouched.

He set John up on the cot in his back room and then sat down on the couch in his office. Nick didn’t need to sleep, but a few hours each night in power-saving mode helped to clear his mind. He sat on the sofa in his office and powered down, eyelids drooping.

The next morning, John was gone, along with the caps hidden behind the loose panel in Nick’s backroom. Nick’s coat sat on his desk, neatly folded, a note sitting on top: I’m sorry in a scrawling hand. Nick sighed, paper crinkling in his fist. He told no one where he’d been the night before.

John came back, three weeks later, unshaved and glassy-eyed, hair in need of a trim. He avoided Nick’s eye when they passed in the street, finding excuses to duck down alleys to avoid the Synth. Nick couldn’t tell whether it was shame or guilt or fear of reprisal, but he made no effort to extract an apology or repayment from the boy.

A few months later, there was a fire in the stands. Half of Diamond City burned before security extinguished the blaze, Mr. and Mrs. McDonough among the victims. John wasn’t home and his older brother escaped unharmed, but the boys found themselves unexpectedly parentless. Nick wondered if that would be the end of it, but John’s trips to Goodneighbor became more frequent after his parents’ sudden deaths.

Ten years passed. The older McDonough boy got involved in politics. On the day of his inauguration, Nick locked himself inside his office, listening helplessly to the chaos outside. No more ghouls in Diamond City, and no more John. He disappeared alongside the town’s oldest residents, and for a while, Nick wondered if Mayor McDonough hadn’t taken advantage of the chaos to rid himself of an embarrassing younger brother. Motive, means, and opportunity, but there was no body.

Another five years later, and Nick had almost forgotten the missing McDonough boy. He’d taken a missing-persons case from some Vaultie, followed them to Goodneighbor to investigate a lead at the Memory Den. Not three steps into town, and some random asshole tried to shake them down for caps. Nick’s hand, now a bare metal skeleton, stripped of its artificial skin, was halfway to its holster when the mayor, a ghoul, intervened. He was quick as a lightening strike, obviously eager to impress the newcomers. He grinned, and for a moment, Nick had a brief impression of the handsome man he had been.

“John?” said Nick, barely believing his eyes.

“Nick?”


End file.
